An inordinate amount of traffic temporarily overwhelmed the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department’s website this weekend (it’s back online now), which prompted the department to post a direct link to their COVID-19 Vaccination Information Form.
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A few days before she died of the Coronavirus on November 23, Maryan Rochel Petoskey sat up in her bed on the COVID-19 ward at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City and looked in both directions. Through a clear greyish tarp that separated her from others, Maryan told her sister Donna that she could see rows and rows of beds on either side. A member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who lived on the Peshawbestown reservation, Maryan Rochel Petoskey was 30 years young. She was the third victim of COVID-19 in Leelanau County, and the first person under age 60 to die of the pandemic.
COVID-19 statistics reported by the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department are staggering. There are 65 new cases between Saturday, Nov. 21, and Monday, Nov. 23. Nearly 98% of those cases are symptomatic. Seven new COVID patients were hospitalized over the weekend, and the Health Department reported two deaths from the coronavirus. One was a Leelanau woman in her 30s who had no “significant co-morbidities” prior to contracting COVID-19.
Comfy chairs, soft lighting, and the tuning of a left-handed guitar set the scene. As fans log on to watch Joshua Davis play, he welcomes them individually with a smile. It hasn’t been easy on performers since the Coronavirus pandemic took deep hold in March, and Davis is no exception. Never mind the fact that he is semi-famous, having been a finalist on the NBC show “The Voice” in 2015—life has been hard. “It was a Wednesday and I had all my gigs canceled on me,” he told me during an interview over Zoom. “My booking agent called me up and they were like, ‘Everybody’s canceling.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, not only is that all my income, but it’s also my creative outlet and it’s my joy.’ So I’ve gotta figure something else out.”
Today, the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department reports a single-day record 20 new COVID-19 cases— 11 in Leelanau County and 9 in Benzie County. Yesterday the Health Department reported 11 cases—8 in Leelanau and 3 in Benzie.
One COVID-19-positive test of a staff member at Glen Lake Community Schools has prompted the school to temporarily close three sections of Fourth Grade and one section of Kindergarten, superintendent Jon Hoover told the Glen Arbor Sun today. The school learned of the case at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday.
In a unified effort to make COVID-19 testing more accessible to our region, the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department, Grand Traverse County Health Department, and Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians are joining forces along with the Michigan National Guard to offer no-cost, drive-thru COVID-19 testing to the public on Monday, Oct. 19, Tuesday, Oct. 20 and Thursday, Oct. 22.
I have seen some truly painful things while working at Munson’s COVID ward during the Coronavirus pandemic. One of my nurses spent 45 minutes trying to set up a FaceTime chat, a Zoom call, anything that he and the patient’s family could think of so that they could see him and talk to him. They never did get it figured out that day. I hope they managed to before he died the following afternoon.
Glen Lake School is one of the first schools in the region to use innovative, bipolar ionization filters in its ventilation systems to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading inside the building.
Each time a singular noun popped up on the screen, Jalen Anderson moved and clicked the mouse to “whack” it. The eight-year-old, who lives in Peshawbestown and just started virtual third grade at Suttons Bay Public Schools, sat with her mother NaTasha to play the online whack-a-mole game, which was intended to help Jalen learn the difference between singular and plural words.